


The Badge [Don't Want It]

by Nocticola



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e01 Fallout, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-11-30 08:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11459547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocticola/pseuds/Nocticola
Summary: What the badge means to Nathan





	The Badge [Don't Want It]

Telling Dwight that he doesn’t want the police badge anymore is a moment full of contradictory emotions for Nathan. First there is the relief. Even though being a cop is basically all Nathan has known (all he remembers knowing), from the afternoons spent at the police station as a kid to enrolling in the academy after college, over time the responsibility, the duty, the pressures, it’s worn him down. The last six months have been about nothing but survival for itself’s sake, after losing everything, *ruining* everything. Being back in Haven now, knowing he will be able to make a difference, should he waste what time he has on playing a cop?

But then there’s the guilt. And the truth. He needs the resources. He needs to find Audrey to make things right. This is what his father raised (trained) him for all those years. Stopping the Troubles for good is what matters. But people are hurting, and dead, because of him. He needs to pay for that. In small ways. Before he can pay for what he did in the big, final, way.

But that damn badge. It’s hard to take it again. He remembers playing with his dad’s badge as a kid, telling his mother he’s going to be just like him one day. That damn detective badge, and how proud he was to finally get it, hoping it would make a difference to the Chief (he hopes it did, he *needs* it to have made a difference, but he’s not actually sure whether it did). That damn badge and Duke’s sullying of it. Making him an unwilling accomplice to smuggling, and robbing his sense of touch with it. The damn badge, that was his only reason to keep going, when he had nothing else but the fact that the town needed him. 

Before Audrey. Holding his Dad’s badge, spilling his secrets to her. Trying to fulfill his role. Failing at it. Losing Audrey. How could he really wear the badge again? His fuck up has sullied it worse than anything else could. But Dwight is telling him he has to. In order to pay for what he did. He needs the resources. What else does he know how to be? He takes it. Just until he’s paid for what he did.


End file.
